Media briefs: News v Palmer (again) … Lambo … ACMA rules against Laws

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News Corp v Clive Palmer, part 6526. You may recall from yesterday’s Media Briefs that Clive Palmer has announced his intention to set a newspaper called the Australasian Times in competition with his nemesis The Australian. The Oz, smelling blood in the water, has for its part told Palmer to bring it on, complete with a Bill Leak cartoon showing a grotesque Palmer (didn’t we tell you to knock it off with the fat jokes?) and calling him a mongrel:

But wait, there’s more. Eight more, in fact. Yes, The Australian has nine stories and commentary pieces in this morning’s edition about the member for Fairfax’s comments about China (that’s even more than the paper published in one day about plain packaging for cigarettes). Oz reporters Mark Schliebs and Andrew Fraser have found some Chinese-born residents in Palmer’s seat of Fairfax who are not happy about the maverick MP’s remarks. Over a photograph of two of them, the headline exhorts: “Show a little respect, say Fairfax voters”.

It’s good advice, and perhaps News Corp stablemate The Daily Telegraph should have followed it. The tabloid’s digital wizards have photoshopped Palmer in a conical Asian hat and silk garment with a fu manchu moustache. Topping it all off is the ’70s Chinese restaurant font and a “Confucius say …” gag …

And speaking of Palmer v News … Palmer has hit back at those rat finks (mouse finks?) at The Australian …

ABC journo signs off. Veteran ABC journalist Karen Barlow is one of the casualties of the Radio National cuts. Barlow, who journeyed to Antarctica to commemorate the centenary of the first Australasian Antarctic expedition, says she’s not sure what will be next.

No privacy for Laws listeners. John Laws breached the privacy of a listener when he read his full name and phone number on air, the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled today. Laws broadcast the details on November 25 last year after the man was critical of his program. ACMA found this was in breach of Clause 2.3 (d) of the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice which state that a licensee must not “use material relating to a person’s personal or private affairs, or which invades an individual’s privacy, unless there is a public interest in broadcasting such information”. Laws read the man’s name and mobile number out twice on his program on 2SM in Sydney, and defended the move by saying there was implied consent from the man. ACMA didn’t accept that excuse or find any public interest in reading out the details. It’s another chapter in Laws’ recent dealings with the broadcasting regulator, earlier this year he was found not guilty of breaching broadcast laws when he asked a woman who had been sexually abused when she was six whether it had been her fault. — Sally Whyte

Roll credits for Movie Guide.According to American media reports this morning, Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide will be no more after the 2015 edition. It started back in 1969 as TV Movies, when Maltin was 17. He expanded the guide away from TV movies to the entire industry, and it became the best-known annual guide to movies. The guide is now published by the Penguin part of Penguin Random House. The 2015 edition will be published on September 2 and will contain more than 1600 pages and reviews of nearly 16,000 movies. And unlike magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, which last month ended after 132 years of print publication and is now an online site, the Movie Guide won’t go to the net. Maltin told Deadline.com that with online movie sites such as Internet Movie Database, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, “We were unable to find an effective way to monetise it on the internet.” But part of the guide will live, at least for another year or so. Maltin plans to publish a third edition of The Classic Movie Guide, which started in 2005. — Glenn Dyer

CNN anchor offers novel solution to Ferguson’s civil unrest: Is your tear gas not packing enough oomph? Are your stun grenades lifeless and not disorienting civilian protesters like they used to? Well, why not try high-impact water cannons? Such was the advice offered by CNN international anchor Rosemary Church on Tuesday. Church seemed genuinely confused as to why police in Ferguson, Missouri, weren’t using water cannons to disperse all those rioting malcontents. Yes, water cannons: timeless, quality crowd control — with the added bonus of both figuratively and literally drowning out the commoners’ complaints about race and poverty. In her defence, it seems Church thought water cannons might offer a more targeted approach to dispersing crowds, as opposed to the “blanket cover” necessitated by tear gas. But really, why stop at water cannons, when you could call in a weapons-capable drone from Texas? Or an armoured personnel carrier from Florida? Because nothing says “no race problems to see here, folks!” quite like white riot cops in a BearCat corralling black protesters.

Islamic State releases video of journalist’s beheading: International and local media are reporting on a video, entitled A Message to America and released online by the Islamic State, that purportedly shows an IS militant beheading an American journalist. Fairfax, The Australianand the ABC are all reporting that the journalist in question is James Foley, a freelance war reporter kidnapped while on assignment in Syria in November, 2012. It is believed Foley was executed in retaliation to recent airstrikes carried out by the US on IS targets in northern Iraq. According to media reports, James Foley is seen in the video kneeling in an orange jumpsuit, saying “I call on my friends, family, and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the US government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacency and criminality.” Tony Abbott, speaking on Brisbane’s 4BC radio, has described the video as “absolutely sickening, absolutely despicable” and “as near to pure evil as we are ever likely to see”.

Front page of the day. We can’t get enough of this morning’s Courier-Mail …

The Curry or Maul – in their “Palmer Hate Campaign” – couldn’t wait to “Lambaste(?)” one of the Senators holding up their Limited News Party’s legislation in the senate – for “bad mouthing China”? ……. A little more than a week after “Putin in the Boot” themselves – to ridicule a bloke that embarrassed their boy Toady Abbott on the world stage, in Bali?